Common Vaccination Myths Busted

Even if you know rationally that vaccines are important for kids' health, common myths about the risks of certain vaccinations can cause worry and stress. Learn the latest thinking about supposed vaccine dangers.

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New
parents may be surprised by the vaccination schedule that infants and young
children face. It doesn’t help that questions about vaccine dangers come up
regularly in the headlines, cementing parents’ fears that there is a connection
between vaccines and autism or other risks to their children.

Vaccines
are so effective that parents no longer have to be terrified about the diseases
they prevent — life-threatening outbreaks that are avoided through
vaccination.

“Before
vaccinations, polio would paralyze as many as 10,000 children in a given year,”
says Zak Zarbock, MD, a pediatrician in private practice with Families First
Pediatrics in South Jordan, Utah. “We would see measles affect as many as four
million children, killing 3,000 a year. Haemophilus type B influenzae would
cause meningitis in 15,000 children a year. Rubella caused birth defects in as
many as 20,000 newborns.”

Thanks
to vaccines, parents simply don’t live with the kind of life-and-death fear
that previous generations knew.

On
the other hand, it is difficult to know exactly how many parents are getting
their children vaccinated according to current recommendations because not
every provider in every state gives that information to a central vaccination
registry.

Additionally,
compliance varies by age and vaccination. For example, national data suggests
that about 88 percent of 2-year-olds have received the MMR (measles, mumps, and
rubella) combination vaccine. About 94 percent of 2-year-olds have received
three doses of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine
and around 89 percent have had the varicella vaccination for chicken pox.

The
fear that motivates parents to get their children vaccinated (or not) has
changed, and it is related to many of these myths about vaccine dangers rather
than the diseases they prevent:

Myth: Vaccines cause autism. “It’s been very
well-documented in hundreds of thousands of children that there is no
relationship in the rate or risk of autism. Children of equal age that receive
the vaccines and those that don’t, don’t show any difference” in autism risk,”
says Dr. Zarbock. Nonetheless, he says questions about vaccines and autism
continue to top the list of concerns that parents have. One way that parents
cope with this fear is to research alternative vaccination schedules, spreading
out the vaccinations. “Delaying vaccines only increases the risk of the many
other serious diseases that can occur in childhood,” he warns.

Myth: Too many vaccines overload
the immune system. The vaccine schedule may seem intense
to many parents, but the reality is that your child is fighting off infection
all day, every day. The immune system is built to do that. There’s no reason to
believe that vaccines as they are scheduled will overload the immune system.

Myth: Vaccines cause attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or other behavioral problems. Zarbock says
that occasionally parents ask him about any possible relationship between
vaccination and behavioral problems and attention disorders. “In the studies
that have been done, we just don’t know what causes a lot of those problems,
but there certainly does not seem to be any connection with vaccines,” he says.

The Truth Behind Vaccination Myths

More
common myths about vaccines:

Myth: The “herd effect” will
protect my child if I decide to skip vaccines. This is
actually true — to an extent. “The herd effect is real. I think it’s
a little bit selfish in that parents are taking advantage of everyone else
vaccinating,” says Zarbock. The other problem is that if an increasingly large
number of parents believe this and opt not to vaccinate their children, then
there will be no herd to have an effect. In that scenario, the unvaccinated
children could not only become sick themselves, but also become carriers and
infect other children or infants.

Myth: Vaccines aren’t really
necessary.
This myth is based on the idea that once a disease is eradicated, we no longer
need the vaccine. Zarbock cites an outbreak of whooping cough (pertussis) in
San Francisco as an example of what might happen if people ignore vaccines. There
were more than 4,000 cases, and 10 infants died. “There’s always a minuscule
risk, but the risk of getting one of these horrible diseases is much worse than
the risks of vaccination,” he says.

Myth: Vaccines make you sick. This concern
comes up most often with regard to the flu vaccine. The injectable vaccine is
made of a dead virus, “so in theory there is no way to get sick,” says Zarbock.
“However, the inhaled (vaccine) is a weakened virus, and in theory there is a
small risk of getting mild symptoms, but nowhere near to the degree that
getting the actual flu would be.” With other vaccines, the most common problems
are site reactions, such as bumps, soreness, or, less frequently, a rash, but
children cannot get the measles as a result of the MMR vaccine, for example.

Myth: Vaccines aren’t safe. “Vaccines are
studied intensively,” says Zarbock. Not only are they studied separately, but
also in combination to make sure that taking more than one at a time is still
safe and effective. Millions of dollars go into ensuring their safety and that
there are limited side effects. Says Zarbock, “Oftentimes in our practice we’ll
use an analogy that the [incidence of] a serious accident in a car is 1 in
100,000 and a serious vaccine reaction is like one in one million.”

Now that you know the truth to counter
each of these common worries, you should be able to feel more comfortable about
your child’s shot schedule.

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